I know nothing about Indian mythology, but when I arrive in the small northern Portuguese town where my husband grew up, I always see the goddess Kali rowing with her various arms in my mind's eye. That's because of my mother-in-law. When she is waiting for us at the garage door, I always imagine that her sisters are standing behind her so that only their arms are sticking out and it looks like my husband's mother has six arms growing out of her side. Of course, nobody greets their daughter-in-law like that, not even in the north of Portugal. But after arriving at my parents-in-law's house, it's usually not even fifteen minutes before the first relatives ring the doorbell - especially Aunt Paula and Aunt Clara.
I can't think about my mother-in-law without thinking about her sisters. Each lives just a short walk away from the other, the three women have spent their working lives in the same factory and they are constantly on the phone to each other, heavens, what else is there to talk about? When they come together, it's like a set of gears that interlock. One washes, one dries, one puts away the dishes. One peels, one slices, one fries potatoes. While two of them spoon up chicken soup with my children at the table, the third washes strawberries for their dessert. My husband has always been as much at home with his aunts as he is with his parents; he doesn't need to call first, he doesn't even knock. Like him, our sons move around as freely with their great-aunts as they do at home, and when we go to my parents-in-law's, they usually discuss where they want to spend the night first on the journey there: With Paula and her cat? Or at Clara's, where the parakeets are, and where you can sometimes weed the garden? And then there's also the puppy at Grandma's.
But it's not just my husband's mum who undergoes a miraculous transformation into the Portuguese version of the goddess Kali when we visit. Something peculiar also happens to me: as soon as I enter my husband's parents' house, all maternal responsibility slips off me like a scantily clad woman's mink coat in a film. What emerges, however, is not a woman in her mid-twenties in lingerie, but an uncle. The kind of uncle we imagine today in the 1950s, one who sits in a wing chair and occasionally pats the cheeks of the children who scurry past him, sometimes hoists a nephew onto his lap to read him a story, and when there's a strong smell, stretches his neck towards his wife, duu, I think he's got something in his nappy. Suddenly my husband and I are guests in our own little family, we watch as our older son pulls his grandfather relentlessly by the sleeve because he wants to play Lego with him, we listen with interest as the younger son excitedly tells his grandmother that the bisi is coming soon or perhaps it has already arrived; somewhere a plate of rice falls to the floor, but Paula and Clara are already there. My husband and I smile at each other and continue eating our dinner in peace, two uncles on holiday.
